Lowe Alpine Ferrata Glove Tested

Lowe Alpine Ferrata Glove Tested

As the name suggests, they’re designed for use on Via Ferrata routes, of which we have a mighty total of one in England. There are plenty in the Dolomites though.

The Via Ferrata are a network of routes protected by cables for moving troops across the mountains in the First World War. They offer good protection as you can clip into the metalwork, but hauling on a metal cable all day isn’t quite what your hands were designed for.

Via ferrata gloves are designed to protect your palms from wear and tear without impeding your movement or slowing you down as you clip and unclip from the cables. They're for big wall use too, but as that's even more of a rarity in the UK it's a secondary consideration here.

There are two main features that make these gloves particularly fit for purpose. One is the ventilation on the back of the hand – it’s made out of mesh fabric, so the sweat can make an easy escape through the hundreds of rice grain-sized holes. Ventilation’s important for any hot and sweaty outdoor activity but particularly handy – no pun intended – in an Italian summer.

More specific to the requirements of a Via Ferrata route is the protection you find on the front of the hand. There’s a thick layer of suede here, in addition to the leather used elsewhere on the glove, and it provides a good solid barrier between your hands and the wire cables. It’s tough enough to keep out any rusty ends of wire that look like they’ve had their day, and also to absorb a good bit of friction.

First impressions were positive. Our first day’s Via Ferrata-ing in these gloves was a ten hour epic so there were plenty of chances to cut or friction burn our palms. Instead, we came home smooth as silk – well almost!

The main function of the glove is to protect your hands from the cables and this is the bit they do really well. The palms are sturdy but flexible and really spare you from wear and tear. We were also glad of them on north facing routes early in the morning, as cold metal on bare skin isn't our thing.

This isn’t just an impression we formed on our first day out. We’ve worn the gloves on several Via Ferrata trips since and they’ve been just as protective, suggesting that they wear reasonably well.

The gloves were also a pretty good fit. They come in five sizes, so there’s a good chance you’ll find a pair to fit you – even our pygmy hands were catered for. There’s some elastic in the fingers so they hug your digits, large or small, and the wrist comes with a Velcro fastening so it adjusts to fit.

Just two problems on the issue of sizing. The thumb holes seem absurdly large compared to the fingers (unless we’ve got abnormally skinny thumbs?) so the elastic ceases to perform any function in that area – your thumbs just end up wallowing around anyway.

Secondly, the stretchy areas are all around the edges of the glove – the wrists and fingers – but this doesn’t guarantee a good fit around the palm itself. In fact, the wedge of protective material across the centre of the hand is rather rectangular in shape, which is fine when your hand is stretched out but not so great when it's clenched around a cable. At that point, the fabric tends to bunch up.

At least the padding on the inside of the thumb is articulated from that on the rest of the hand, so your flexibility isn’t affected. Still, we could have done with a bit less material on the palms, or a bit more articulation, at times.

There’s just one more slight downside and that’s the washing machine effect if you take the gloves out in the rain. You know they tell you to wash dark colours separately? Well, washing them along with your skin doesn’t seem to fit in too well with that rule. A day of Via Ferrata-ing in, erm, inclement conditions gave us completely black hands which took a lot of scrubbing to clean. Perhaps we need a few more wet weather sessions before the colour settles down?:-(

And finally, what about ventilation? You’re more likely to use Ferrata gloves in the heat than the rain – at least you hope so – which means that getting rid of sweat comes high up the agenda. The Ferrata gloves have a good shot at this, bearing in mind the ventilation on the back of the hand. We find we end up sweatier and clammier on the front side of the hand, where there isn’t any ventilation, so this isn’t a perfect solution. Still, if there has to be a pay-off between the need for ventilation and the need for protection then in this case, the latter rightly wins.

There are a few niggling problems, from oversized thumbholes to excess material on the palm, not to mention the odd black hand. Like we said, that hasn’t stopped us using them, which suggests that the pros outweigh the cons.

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